Greener Than You Think Part 40

When the Gra.s.s was in the Deccan and still well below the Yangtze, the Athenians were thrown into panic by the rumor it had appeared in Salonika. At the same time there was wild rejoicing in the streets of Ma.r.s.eilles based on the belief large stretches of North America had become miraculously free. The cult of the Gra.s.s idolaters flourished despite the strictest interdictions and great ma.s.smeetings were frequently held during which the wors.h.i.+pers turned their faces toward the southeast and prayed fervently for speedy immolation. It was quite useless for the World Government to attempt to spread the actual facts; the earlier censors.h.i.+p together with a public temper that preferred to believe the extremes of good or bad rather than the truth of gradual yet relentless approach, made people heedless of broadcasts rarely received even by state operated publicaddress systems or of handbills which even the still literate could not bother to decipher.

The idealization of the Socialist Union--once the Soviet Union--which had risen and fallen through the years, was quickened among those not enamored of the Gra.s.s. There must be some intrinsic virtue in this land which had not only been immune to inoculation by the Metamorphizer, but kept the encroaching weed from invading its borders in spite of its long continued proximity across Bering Strait and the Aleutians. The Gra.s.s had jumped gaps thousands of ocean miles and yet it had not bridged that narrow strip of water. It would have been a shock to these people had they known, as I knew and as the World Government had vainly tried to tell them, what Moscow had recently and reluctantly admitted: the Gra.s.s had long since crossed into Siberia and was now working its will from Kamchatka to the Lena River.

The people of j.a.pan, caught between the jaws of a closing vise, responded in a manner peculiar to themselves. The Christians, now forming a majority, declared the Gra.s.s a punishment for the sins of the world and hoped, by their steadfastness in the face of certain death, to earn a national martyr's crown and thus perhaps redeem those still benighted. The s.h.i.+ntoists, on the other hand, agreed the Gra.s.s was a punishment--but for a different crime. Had the doctrine of the Eight Corners of the World never been abandoned the j.a.panese would never have permitted the Gra.s.s to overwhelm the Yamato race. The new emperor's reign name, Saiji, they argued, ought not to mean rule by the people as it was usually interpreted, but rule of the people and they called for an immediate Saiji Restoration, under which the subjects of the Mikado would welcome death on the battlefield in a manner compatible with bus.h.i.+do, thus redeeming previous aberrations for which they were now being chastised. Both parties agreed that under no circ.u.mstances would any j.a.panese demean himself by leaving Nippon and the world was therefore spared an additional influx from these islands.

But the j.a.panese were the only ones who refused to join the westward stampede plunging the world daily deeper into barbarism. We in England had cause to congratulate ourselves on our unique position. The Channel might have been a thousand miles wide instead of twenty. The turmoil of the Continent and of Africa was but dimly reflected. There was still a skeletal vestige of trade, the dole kept the lazy from starvation, railways still functioned on greatly reduced schedules, and the wireless continued to operate from, "Good morning, everybody, this is London," to the last strains of _G.o.d Save the Queen_. Although I was constantly rasped by inactivity and by the slowness of the researchworkers to find a weapon against the Gra.s.s, I was happy to be able to wait out this terrible period in so ameliorative a spot.

True, our depots in the Arabian and Sahara deserts were unthreatened by either the Gra.s.s or the horde, but I should have found it uncomfortable indeed to have lived in either place. In Hamps.h.i.+re or London I felt myself the center of what was left of the world, ready to jump into action the moment the great discovery was finally made and the Gra.s.s began to recede.

Preblesham, my right hand, flew weekly to Africa and Asia Minor, weeding out those workers who threatened to become useless to us because of their reaction to the isolated and monotonous conditions at the depots; keeping the heavily armed guards about our closed continental properties alert and seeing our curtailed activities in Great Britain were judiciously profitable. This period of quiescence suited his talents perfectly, for it required of him little imagination, but great industry and force.

I had noticed for some time a slight air of preoccupation and constraint in his demeanor during his reports to me, but I put it down to his engrossment with our affairs and resolved to make him take an extended vacation as soon as he could be spared, never dreaming of disloyalty from him.

I was shocked, then, and deeply wounded when at the close of one of our conferences he announced, "Mr Weener, I'm leaving you."

I begged him to tell me what was wrong, what had caused him to come to this decision. I knew, I said, that he was overworked and offered him the badly needed vacation. He shook his head.

"It aint that. Overwork! I don't believe there is such a thing. At least Ive never suffered from it. No, Mr Weener, my trouble is something no amount of vacations can help, because I can't get away from a Voice."

"Voice, Tony?" Hallucinations were certainly a symptom of overwork. I began mentally recalling names of prominent psychiatrists.

"A Voice within," he repeated firmly. "I am a sinful man, a miserable backslider. Maybe Brother Paul was not treading a true path; I doubt if he was or I would not have been led aside from following him so easily; but when I was doing his work I was at least trying to do the will of G.o.d and not the will of another man no better--spiritually, you understand, Mr Weener, spiritually--than myself.

"But now His Voice has sought me out again and I must once more take up the cross. I feel a call to go on a mission to the poor heathens and urge on them submission to their Father's rod."

"Among those savages across the Channel! They will tear you limb from limb."

"Christ will make me whole again."

"Tony, you are not yourself. Youre upset."

"I am not myself, Mr Weener, I have become as a little child again and do my Father's bidding. I am upset, yes, turned upsidedown and insideout by a Force not content to leave men in wrong att.i.tudes or sinful states. But upset, I stand upright and go about my Father's business.

G.o.d bless you, Mr Weener."

Miss Francis and Preblesham, at opposite ends of the intellectual scale, both maundering on about doing the Will of G.o.d and General Thario talking about marks on foreheads--what sort of feebleminded, retrogressive world was I living in? All the outworn superst.i.tions of religion taking hold of people and intruding themselves into otherwise normal conversation. A wave of madness, akin to the plague of the Gra.s.s, must be sweeping over the earth, was my conclusion.

If General Thario's desertion had thrown an extra weight on my shoulders, Preblesham's burdened me with all the petty details of routine. It was now I who had to inspect our depots periodically and make constant trips into the dangerous regions across the Channel to see that the shutdown plants were being properly cared for. I resented bitterly the trick of fate preventing me from finding for any length of time subordinates to whom I could delegate authority.

Nor even on whom I could rely. What were Miss Francis and her wellpaid staff doing all this time? Why had they produced nothing in return for the fat living they got from me? The Gra.s.s was halfway across Asia, lapping the High Pamirs from the south and from the north, digesting Korea, Manchuria, Mongolia, thrusting runners into Turkestan--and still no progress made against it. It would be a matter of mere months now until our Arabian depots would be in the danger zone. I could only conclude these socalled scientists were little better than fakers, completely incompetent when confronted by emergency.

They were ready enough to announce useless and inapplicable discoveries and conclusions; byproducts of their research, they called them, with an obviously selfconscious attempt to speak the language of industry. The insects living in and below the Gra.s.s were growing ever larger and more numerous. Expeditions had found worms the size of snakes and bugs big as birds, happy in their environment. The oceans, they announced, were drying up, due to the retention of moisture in the soil by the Gra.s.s, and added complacently that in a million years or so, a.s.suming the Gra.s.s in the meantime covered the earth, there would be no bodies of water left. Climates were equalizing themselves, the polar icecaps were melting and spots previously too cold for _Cynodon dactylon_ were now covered. I felt it to be a clear case of embezzlement that they had used my money, paid for a specific purpose, to make these useless, if possibly interesting, deductions.

For while they dawdled and read learned papers to each other, the Gra.s.s touched the Persian Gulf and the Caspian, paused before Lake Balkash and reached the Yenisei at the Arctic Circle. Far to the south it jumped from India to the Maldives, from the Maldives to the Seych.e.l.les and from the Seych.e.l.les on to the great island of Madagascar. I hammered the theme of "Time, time" at Miss Francis, but her only response was a helpless sneer at my impatience.

At intervals Burlet inquired of me what progress was being made with his plan for cities of refuge. I could only answer him truthfully that as far as I knew the World Government had it under consideration.

"But--if you will excuse my saying so, sir--in the meantime those people are dying."

"Quite so, Burlet, but there is nothing you or I can do about it."

For the first time since he entered my service I caught him looking almost impertinently at me. I faced him back and he dropped his eyes.

"Very good, sir. Thank you."

He had made an understatement when he talked about "those people" dying.

Europe was a madhouse. In selfdefense all strangers were instantly put to death and in retaliation the invading throngs spared no native.

Peasants feared to stay their ground in terror of the oncoming Orientals and equally dared not move westward where certain killing awaited them at the hands of those who yesterday had been their neighbors. In an effort to cling to life they formed small bands and fought impartially both the static and dynamic forces. Farming was practically abandoned and the swollen population lived entirely on wild growth or upon human flesh.

In Africa the situation was little better. Internecine wars and slavery made their reappearance; the South African whites mercilessly slaughtered the blacks against a possible uprising and the Kaffirs, fleeing northward, repeated the European pattern of overcrowding, famine and pestilence.

_89._ The day our Arabian depots were abandoned before the oncoming Gra.s.s I felt my heart would nearly break with anguish. All that labor, all that forethought, all those precious goods gone. And all because Miss Francis and those like her were too lazy or incompetent to do the work for which they were paid. I flew to the spot, trying vainly to salvage something, but lack of planes and fuel made it impossible.

During this trip I caught my first sight of the Gra.s.s for years.

I suppose no human eye sees anything abstractly, but only in relation to other things known and observed. With more than half the world in its grip, the towering wave of green bore no more resemblance to its California prototype than a brontosaurus to the harmless lizard scuttling over the sunny floor of an outhouse. Between the dirtysugar sands of the desert and the oleograph sky it was a third band of brilliant color, monstrously outofplace. A tidalwave would have seemed less alien and awful.

The distance was great enough so that no individual part stood out distinctly; instead, it presented itself as a flat belt of green, menacing and obdurate. As my plane rose I looked back at it stretching northward, southward and eastward to the horizon, a new invader in a land weary of many invaders; and I thought of the dead civilizations it covered: Bactria, Parthia, Babylon; the Empire of Lame Timur, Cathay, Cambodia, and the dominions of the Great Mogul.

The refuge of mankind narrowed continually, an island diminished daily by a lapping surf. Africa was thrice beset, in the south from Madagascar; in the center from the steppingstones in the Indian Ocean, and across the Red Sea where the Gra.s.s sucked renewed life from the steaming jungles and grew with unbelievable rapidity; in the highlands of Rhodesia and Abyssinia it crept slowly over the plateaus toward the slopes of Kilimanjaro and the Drakensberg. Unless something were done quickly our Sahara depots would go the way of the Arabian ones and we would be left with only our limited British facilities until the day when Africa and Asia would be reconquered.

The violence and murder which had gone before were tame compared with the new fury that shook the feartortured people of Europe, helpless in the nightmareridden days, dreaming through twitching nights of an escape geographically nonexistent. Dismembered corpses in the streets, arenas packed with dead bodies, fallow fields newly fertilized with human blood added their stench to that of an unwashed, disease riddled continent. A rumor was circulated that there were still Jews alive and those who but yesterday had sought each other in mortal combat now happily united to hunt down a common prey. And sure enough, in miserable caverns and cellars. .h.i.therto overlooked, shunning daylight, a few men in skullcaps and prayingshawls were found, dragged out into the disinterested sunlight with their families and exterminated. It was at this time the Gra.s.s crossed the Urals and leaped the Atlantic into Iceland.

In England, George Bernard Shaw, whose reported death some years before had been mourned by those who had never read a word of his, rose apparently from the grave to deliver himself of a last message:

"If any who wept over my senile and useless carca.s.s had taken the trouble to read _Back to Methuselah_, they could have rea.s.sured themselves regarding my premature demise. If ever there was to be a Longliver, that Longliver would have to be me. This was determined by the Life Force in the middle of the XIX Century. That Life Force could not afford to rob a squinting world of a man of perfect vision.

"Like Haslam (I forget his first name--see my complete works if you're interested) I gave myself out as dead in order to avoid the gawking of a curious and idle mult.i.tude. I was recuperating from the labors of my first century in order to throw myself into the more arduous ones of the second.

"But as I have pointed out so many times, the race was between maturity and the petulant self-destruction of protracted adolescence. Mankind had either to take thought or to perish, and it has chosen (perhaps sensibly after all) to perish. I am too old now to protest against selfindulgence.

"Is it too late? Is it still possible to survive? The s.h.i.+p is now indeed upon the rocks and the skipper in his bunk below drinking bottled ditchwater. But perhaps a Captain Shotover, drunk on the milk of human kindness rather than rum, will emerge upon the quarterdeck and, blowing his whistle, call all hands on deck before the last rending crash. In that unlikely event, one of those emerging from the forecastle will be G. Bernard Shaw."

_90._ In spite of the anarchic and unspeakable conditions on the Continent, I could not refrain from making one last tour of inspection.

The thought of flooded mines, pillaged factories and gutted mills was more than I could bear. The stocks of oil in England were running short, but I commanded enough to fill my great transportplane. We flew low over roads crawling with humanity as a sick animal crawls with vermin. Some cities were empty, obscenely bereft of population; others choked with wanderers.

The Ruhr was a valley filled with the dead, with men tearing each other's throats in a frenzy of hunger, with the unburied and the soon to be buried sleeping sidebyside through restless nights. Not a building was still whole; what had not been torn down in pointless rage had been razed by reasonless arson. Not one brick of the great openhearths had been left in place, not one girder of the great sheds remained erect.

The Saar was in little better case and the mines of Alsace were useless for the next quartercentury. The industrial district around Paris had been leveled to the ground by the mobs and Belgium looked as it had after the worst devastation of war. I had expected to find a shambles, but my utmost antic.i.p.ations were exceeded. I could bring myself to look upon no more and my pilot informing me that our gas was low, I ordered him to return.

We were in sight of the Channel, not far from Calais, when both starboard engines developed trouble simultaneously and my pilot headed for a landingfield below. "What are you about, you fool?" I shouted at him.

"Gasline fouled. I think I can fix it in a few minutes, Mr Weener."

"Not down among those savages. We wouldnt have a chance."

"We wouldnt have a chance over the Channel, sir. I'd rather risk my neck among fellow humans than in the water."

"Maybe you would, but I wouldnt. Straighten out the plane and go on."